When it comes to dealing with the reptiles, the pond has entered the third stage of river development, which it first learned about long ago in geography - so much suffering in Tamworth High ...
Just as in old age rivers, the pond is now inclined to meander, be slow-moving, collect lots of silty sediment, and be inclined to lateral erosion and carving new channels ... occasionally the pond might even set up an oxbow lake or a point bar, just to do something different ...
Whenever a correspondent apologises for going off topic, or raising a matter which might be of actual interest - as opposed to a self-induced bout of nausea - the pond likes to point out that's the whole point, and is frequently rewarded by following the link provided...
So if the pond wants to start with referencing a good Hydeing, featuring that oops-a-daisy about the Royals, why not?
And once the Royals get into it, why not mention King Chuck going the Greek tie, as if he's lost his marbles, or perhaps his environmental crusade? Especially as Rish!'s eyeline seems intent on ignoring the detail ...
Polonius is, of course, just doing a reptile riff which has become increasingly familiar and wearying over the last few weeks, and the pond's immediate instinct was to do an old river routine and meander off to the Daily Beast (paywall) ...
Even more herding, even more ethnic cleansing ...
Of course you won't read any of that in Polonius, with much dissembling and lickspittle fellow travelling with a bunch of fundamentalist theocrats down there in the pit with the opposing fundamentalists ...
Meanwhile, other news failed to penetrate the hide of the bigot, thickened by years of mindless bigotry ...
Sadly, the pond has already cried out to the dear sweet long absent lord, though the pond feels like doing it again, because that snap of the ruins of Gaza is on a par what Vlad the impaler is doing to Ukraine ... what chance does a bird have when there are barking mad war mongers all around?
There's no point cuting away from Polonius to get an idea of how killing civilians is considered an unfortunate side matter ...
Bigots gotta do what bigots gotta do, and you're not likely to reset a mind long ago cast in concrete.
Even mentioning that the idea behind it all is to wipe out the gulag and send a million or so Palestinians into other lands ... relocate them into tent cities in the Sinai Desert, and then they can return to rubble if they feel like it ... will fly right past the old concrete noggin ...
You see, Polonius is all in, and will never hear anything different, or learn anything new ... just defame Anglo-Celts, whatever that tribe might be, while blathering about moral equivalence, the ABC and the Graudian in his usual way ...
You see, Polonius is all in, and will never hear anything different, or learn anything new ... just defame Anglo-Celts, whatever that tribe might be, while blathering about moral equivalence, the ABC and the Graudian in his usual way ...
In any other context, it would be called war criminals committing war crimes, a form of collective punishment which is expressly forbidden, but not by Polonius, and so the the pond will settle for an infallible Pope trying to keep the Polonial boiler room under control ...
And so to meander a little more, this time with the Angelic one ...
What, the pond wonders, would the Angelic one make of certain types clearly suffering from a mental disorder ...
Never mind, we're in the territory of harden the fuck up, or if you will "I was a breeding machine for the Catholic church Ponzi scheme, and I survived to scribble columns for the lizard Oz, and you can too if you get the right mindset"...
Just to make that text clearer ...
And the Holy Wut evocation of the pathetic lizard Oz remnant graphic department effort was pretty good too ...
Frankly these asides are the only way that the pond can make it to the end of an Angelic 'harden the fuck up' read ...
The joke of course is that services outside the NDIS are pathetically inadequate, but if you're a fundamentalist Catholic all you have to do is pray to your god and head off to Calvary, and soon enough you can be scribbling barking mad columns about the suffering for the lizard Oz ...
And so to the bonus, and the pond kept quiet about this one, because the pond knows it's an automatic turn off for those punters who refuse to take the "Ned" Everest challenge, made all the more difficult because there's no way to distract from the mad uncle down from the attic to shower wisdom on the economics peasants ...
But it's a feeble ploy. Some days you've just gotta do the hard grind, the hard yards, take the ball up the guts ....
You even get to marvel at the fancy toe-tapping at work ...
CNN reported on Friday that the House speaker promoted the book on his podcast, Truth be Told with Mike & Kelly Johnson, saying that it “really could make some waves.”
He had also written several opinion articles on McKay’s blog, The Hayride, including one published on Jan. 6, 2021, in which he said he would object to President Joe Biden’s certification.
In the book’s foreword, Johnson wrote that McKay “managed here to articulate well what millions of conscientious, freedom-loving Americans are sensing.”
A spokesperson for Johnson responded to CNN, claiming that the House speaker never read the sections of the book featured in the news channel’s report.
“He wrote the foreword as a favor to a friend, supportive of the general theme of the book but not as an endorsement of all the opinions expressed.”
After you've left base camp and a little way into the "Ned" climb, and the oxygen starting to thin, such distractions are appreciated because there's endless gobbets to go ...
In the end, the distractions are inclined to be self-defeating, and just add to the agonies of the climb.
You might well pause to head off another path, and end up at Charlie Sykes' You Are Really Not Sufficiently Alarmed ...
Bill Kristol?! Suddenly the pond is running a Bill Kristol joke with equanimity?
That's where the madness of "Ned" can take you if you're not careful ...
The pond realises that there are a few really tough nuts who will manage to read "Ned" and might even manage a comment, but to your average old river, it's just a collection of silt (don't try saying that in a tongue teaser or who knows what DeSantis style potty word will come out) ...
Oh dear, US politics, but on we go ...
Sure, if you read it closely, you come to understanding that "Ned" is the only person on the planet to know what's wrong, and how to fix it, a bit like the bromancer is the only person incountry to understand defence and how to fix it (being too old for service is the best way, with the armchair the best place for generals to do their analysis).
On the upside, reading "Ned", you never have to worry about the planet ...
You just have to run around like a headless chook, desperately trying to maintain the Chicken Little look ...
It certainly is wonderful, climbers. Congratulations, you've reached the last "Ned" gobbet and a final push and the summit will be yours ...
It's not expected to make sense. "Ned"doesn't want to make sense. He wants to spread a little fear and loathing, and perhaps when the flight mode sets in, numbness will follow ...
As for the pond, it's a service designed to reward climbers or those who keep hitting themselves on the head with a hammer ...
Time to stop... and feel the relief, and you can throw away the drugs and alcohol you needed for the climb.
All things must end ... or must they ...
An ox-bow lake or a billabong - is there a difference ?
ReplyDeleteElon, ndis "The joke of course is that services outside the NDIS are pathetically inadequate" the angelic one, polonius, the gop, ab(n)ews corpse all BLAME YOU.
ReplyDeleteLuckily Katherine Macfarlane to the rescue. "Accomodation Discrimination" outs the lot of them;
Macfarlane, Katherine, Accommodation Discrimination (August 15, 2022). 72 American University Law Review
"This Article identifies experiences deeply familiar to people with disabilities to explore how rules intended to perpetuate equality foster discrimination."
SSRN:https://ssrn.com/abstract=4190587 orhttp://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4190587
If it wasn't for the antiemetic cartoons I'd have sprayed bile instead of my coffee.
Ned is quoting Westacott on living standards really.
ReplyDeleteWau: "Middle-class financial woes build into an electoral tidal wave" Does this mean we're going to get our very own "red wave" ? Except that it would be a 'blue wave' out here, wouldn't it.
ReplyDeleteAnd anyway, hasn't our almost still brand new RBA governor declared that most Australians are "doing fine" ?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-29/inflation-consumer-price-indicator-abs-october-2023/103164722
Nevertheless, here's Neddy: "Labor's resort to hysterical attacks on Peter Dutton ... in a replay of its character assassination of Scott Morrison...". But surely ScoMo would have to actually have a 'character', not just a grandiose bunch of self-gratifying urges, in order for it to be "assassinated" ?
Any'ow, Ned assures us that: "The origins of Australia's economic dilemma long predate Labor's election victory last year." Ok, so I guess Ned is telling us that it goes back to how Rudd-Gillard destroyed the wonderful economy built by Howard-Costello, and that nearly a decade of Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison just couldn't do anything to fix it, and Albanese can't either. We're all doomed, aren't we.
So, Ned informs us "Labor's future - whether it can be re-elected as a majority government or whether it is driven into the ignominy of minority government -". Now surely, the LNP's future, not being elected in any way or form at all, is even more ignominious ? Besides, most Australian governments for some time have not had a senate majority - except when little old 'onest Johnny had one and lost a landslide and his own seat - for quite a while. So that makes them all 'minority governments' in reality, doesn't it.
Ah so, just another sojourn into "the joy of reading 'Ned'".
Anti-Semitism arrived in 1788 with the First Fleet. Sh! Don’t say that to the onion muncher! Sure the First Fleet were Anglo-Celts, but surely they weren’t Green Left comrades, since Karl Marx hadn’t even been born. Still, just another opportunity for Polonius to bring down his judgement on the ABC and the Green Left. One can only wonder what Polonius thinks of a Jewish person who is Green Left or works for the ABC.
ReplyDeleteYeah well, the "Green", if not very "Left", has been important for Britain since the days of the Forest Charter which gave access to forests for British commoners and led to a revival of the British river system and the network of canals on which much of English internal trade depended.
DeleteDorothy - I looked at your challenge with ‘Ned’, but had nothing in me to rise to that. What has been in my thinking since yesterday was the Dog Bovverer showing that they are all drifting (river analogy) onto a sandbank from which they cannot be parodied. Our Bovverer looks at the business of running the country as something akin to a football competition in the reserve grade. Thus, the government can be shown as less than perfect, ergo Dutton could well have the next grand final fall his way. Of course, it would be good if, as well as ‘operating with certitude and acute political judgment’ he could offer some idea - SOME idea - of how he would start his victory celebrations. The Bovverer, from his own vast experience guiding ministers, obligingly sets out a few topic headings - cheap and reliable energy, skills shortage with less migration, being ready to invade China, sort out education. All offered with the clincher that ‘The indications’ are that Dutton will do better on this than most opposition leaders. Presumably some hapless animal has been dissected, and its entrails spread before the coalition party room.
ReplyDeleteTo say that he ‘chose’ to oppose the voice is a generous interpretation. The sequence was Senator Jacinta Price made her statement, which left her supposed ‘leader’, Littleproud, little choice but to say ‘Yes, that’s our position’; once one partner in the supposed coalition had staked out that position, Dutts ‘chose’ to follow, and never no mind that several ostensible ‘Liberal’ members would at least have liked opportunity for one of those ‘mature discussions’ that Dutts and Littlething both talk about, but seldom offer to their members.
But fundamentally, the message from the Bovverer is that it is not about ideology, or policy - it is down in the reptile silt - our side should be on the Speaker’s right, and all will be well. However a reader might look at it, it is beyond parody.
So, Dorothy, it was easy to refuse (well, not even consider) the ‘Ned’ Everest challenge. He is even further from parody than the Bovverer, but thank you for the snaps.
Yes, well the things that really lost it for 'Yes' were:
Delete1. not bipartisan
2. "if you don't know, vote No"
3. the disgusting opposition from the "mass media" - mainly Murdoch's lot, of course, but also very much the Advance (Australia) lot who are happily showing us what an Australian version of Fox Noise would look like
4. an amount of unthinking residual racism.
Though I had lunch with an old (we're both four-score) t'other day, and her pronouncement was "leave our Constitution alone". I wonder how many thought that.
If I might latch on to the river analogy again, the putative leader of the nationals, and my local member, D Littleproud, has been fronting Sky on river matters. A week or so back, it was to accuse this federal government of not caring for rural Australians because it had deleted their contribution to the Emu Swamp Dam from the list of supported infrastructure projects for this budget cycle.
ReplyDeleteBriefly - Emu Swamp Dam was to do no more than store up to 12 gigalitres of Murray-Darling water for the almost exclusive use of 6-8 large-scale veggie growers (and substantial contributors to party funds). The actual 12 gigalitres would have to be acquired in various ways, and our current council offered a portion of Stanthorpe’s existing domestic supply as part of it. From the town that was trucking its domestic supply up the range two years ago, but - ya gotta look after the farmers. Well, some of the farmers.
However acquired, the 12 gigs would not be available for crop irrigation each year - that number has been guessed at, oh, around 4-5 gigs. Now to the good part. The projected cost of building the dam has gone somewhere above $250 million. That does not include the pipelines to get the water back up the catchment to the large growers - distances of around 30 kms. None of the big growers is on record as offering money for getting the water to them, or even to pay going rate for it when it arrives.
You might think that, at around $50 million per irrigation gigalitre per year, that would be expensive water to produce mainly industrial tomatoes, but it is only expensive if you - the grower - have to pay for it. If all the other Aussies who contribute to the tax office each year pay for it - well, it’s virtually free, innit? But those bean-counters in Canberra have not seen it that way - and it was deleted from the list. Which just goes to show how little regard they have for rural Australia.
The Littleproud, with some colleagues, was back in from of the Sky cameras this week, damning Tania Plibersek for her utter betrayal of the Murray-Darling plan. Having been in on the early drafts of that plan, I won’t bore readers with reasons why I disagree with Littleproud’s assessment, because the more interesting bit of myth-making came with his prediction of the supposed effects of, as he always puts it - ‘withdrawing’ - that environmental allocation from the river. Newsflash, Dave, mate - the whole point of environmental allocation is that it stays in the system.
But, man of the people, he went on about how this will drive up the prices of fruit and veggies in the supermarkets, inflicting deep pain on city folks, and devastating his constituents. He tells us he knows these people. Their businesses growing fruit and veg will, somehow, disappear, and he named the towns from which that would happen, including Warwick. I guess that message carries with folk ‘darn south’, but the Condamine River goes well past Warwick before it supports any significant irrigation farming - and that largely cotton. Was it Minderbinder who was working on edible cotton - with a touch of chocolate?
Neither is the water in that stretch of the system any significant part of the Murray-Darling water trade.
Oh - and the environmental allocation, as it flows past so many inland towns, will help maintain other substantial economic activities, and employers, like tourism, but good ole agrarian socialism must not be denied.
"If you really believe it, then it isn't a lie."
DeleteIt's quite extraordinary just what some reptiles can truly believe, isn't it.
On productivity, this cartoon has a solution: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/generivory
ReplyDelete"[Penguins] take thousands of micro-naps a day, but each nap will only be about four seconds long. According to researchers, they’re able to function fine like that. If only the same were true for human parents."
ReplyDeleteWho says it isn't ?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/02/elon-musk-x-advertisers-week-in-patriarchy